All posts tagged: debt

The Return of Trump—V | Astra Taylor, Michael Greenberg, Coco Fusco, Verlyn Klinkenborg, Thomas Powers, Anne Enright

The Return of Trump—V | Astra Taylor, Michael Greenberg, Coco Fusco, Verlyn Klinkenborg, Thomas Powers, Anne Enright

Published by skeptic

Astra Taylor • Michael Greenberg • Coco Fusco • Verlyn Klinkenborg • Thomas Powers • Anne Enright Astra Taylor On election night, before Harris’s loss set in, some exit polls showed that “democracy” was a top concern for voters. Many liberals took the result as an auspicious sign. But what is democracy? That was the title of a documentary I made during the 2016 presidential campaign. As I conducted dozens of interviews across the United States over many months, I learned that there was hardly a consensus over the word’s meaning. Ordinary people struggled to define it; a recent college graduate asked me if democracy was when “they tell you what to do.” Others, usually men, scoffed that we actually live in a republic, not a democracy, as though that settled the matter. Still others—many of them—found the American political system exasperatingly corrupt: rigged by special interests, permeated by racism, and almost or already irredeemable. I also spoke to young conservatives and attended Donald Trump’s rallies, where he railed against the War on Terror, Wall …

Biden cancels .5 billion in student debt for 60,000 more borrowers

Biden cancels $4.5 billion in student debt for 60,000 more borrowers

Published by Sam

The Biden administration announced Thursday that it was forgiving another $4.5 billion in student debt for more than 60,000 borrowers. The latest round of relief is a result of the U.S. Department of Education’s fixes to the popular, but once troubled, Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. President Joe Biden, who has forgiven more education debt than any other president in U.S history, said that the number of borrowers to benefit from the program under his administration now exceeded 1 million. “Public service workers – teachers, nurses, firefighters, and more – are the bedrocks of our communities and our country,” Biden said in a statement. “But for too long, the government failed to live up to its commitments.” The PSLF program, signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2007, allows certain not-for-profit and government employees to have their federal student loans canceled after 10 years. In 2013, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau estimated that one-quarter of American workers may be eligible. However, the program was plagued by problems. Often, borrowers believed they were on track …

Too ill to work, too poor to get better: how debt traps families working at India’s kilns | Global development

Too ill to work, too poor to get better: how debt traps families working at India’s kilns | Global development

Published by skeptic

The phrase “khat rahein hain” (“being worn down”) is how Suma Devi describes her 16 years of labouring at the brick kilns near the city of Mathura in Uttar Pradesh, more than 500 miles from her own state of Bihar. Six years ago Devi had just given birth to her baby daughter when she was diagnosed with tuberculosis and put on a nine-month course of antibiotics. It is an effective way to treat TB but Devi had to abandon the course halfway through to find work at the Madhav brick kiln in Naujheel, far from her home in a village near the city of Gaya. It has made the last few years the toughest of her 16 seasons working in kilns. “I don’t feel well. I have not got better in five to six years,” she says, coating clay in sand and moulding it into rectangular blocks on a wooden frame on a sweltering day. Suma Devi could not complete her treatment for TB as she had to move 500 miles from Bihar to get …

Lib Dems to promise £1.5bn reform of carer’s allowance including debt amnesty | Carers

Lib Dems to promise £1.5bn reform of carer’s allowance including debt amnesty | Carers

Published by skeptic

The Liberal Democrats will commit to a £1.5bn overhaul of carer’s allowance, including a £20-a-week boost for more than 1 million people who devote their lives to looking after frail, ill and disabled loved ones, in their general election manifesto. An ongoing Guardian investigation has revealed that tens of thousands of unpaid carers have been forced by the government to pay back huge sums – and in some cases have faced criminal prosecution – for minor and accidental breaches of carer’s allowance earnings rules. Proposed reforms to be unveiled on Monday by the Lib Dem leader, Ed Davey, will include a write-off of £250m of carer’s allowance overpayment debts run up by more than 100,000 carers, and measures to help carers earn more through part-time paid work. Davey, who is a carer himself, said the proposals were designed to give family carers a fair deal and put a stop to what he called the “shameful hounding” of unpaid carers by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). The Guardian’s revelations about the scale and human …

Debt payments by countries most vulnerable to climate crisis soar | Debt relief

Debt payments by countries most vulnerable to climate crisis soar | Debt relief

Published by skeptic

Debt payments by the 50 countries most vulnerable to the climate crisis have doubled since the start of the coronavirus pandemic and now stand at their highest level in more than three decades, campaigners have warned. The Debt Justice charity said countries at the highest risk of being affected by global heating were paying 15.5% of government revenues to external creditors – up from less than 8% before Covid-19 and 4% at their lowest recent point in 2010. Using data from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the charity said its new report showed the urgent need for comprehensive debt relief so that poor countries could invest in measures to tackle the climate crisis. “Record levels of debt are crushing the ability of the most vulnerable countries to tackle the climate emergency,” said Heidi Chow, the executive director of Debt Justice. “We need a rapid and effective debt relief scheme to cancel debts down to a sustainable level. The UK can play its part by legislating to ensure private lenders take part in …

UK care agencies accused of exploiting foreign workers caught in debt traps | Social care

UK care agencies accused of exploiting foreign workers caught in debt traps | Social care

Published by skeptic

British social care agencies have been accused of exploiting foreign workers, leaving people living on the breadline as they struggle to pay off debts run up while trying to secure jobs that fail to materialise. Dozens of people working for 11 different care providers have told the Guardian they paid thousands of pounds to agents to secure jobs working in UK care homes or residential care, with most finding limited or no employment when they arrived. Many are now struggling to pay off huge debts in their home countries and having to work in irregular jobs for below the minimum wage. Labour and the Conservatives are now under pressure to tackle the issue if they win next month’s election. The Tories recently banned foreign care workers bringing their dependents to the UK with them, a ban Labour said last week it would keep in place in an effort to bring net immigration down. But experts say the ban has failed to tackle the deeper issue of exploitation of the workers themselves, many of whom are …

New parents contend with an average of ,000 of medical debt : Shots

New parents contend with an average of $3,000 of medical debt : Shots

Published by skeptic

Medical debt is as much a hallmark of having children as long nights and dirty diapers. The Crivilare family, Andrew, Heather and Rita, 2, are pictured at their kitchen table in Jacksonville, Ill. Neeta Satam for KFF Health News hide caption toggle caption Neeta Satam for KFF Health News Medical debt is as much a hallmark of having children as long nights and dirty diapers. The Crivilare family, Andrew, Heather and Rita, 2, are pictured at their kitchen table in Jacksonville, Ill. Neeta Satam for KFF Health News JACKSONVILLE, Ill. — Heather Crivilare was a month from her due date when she was rushed to an operating room for an emergency cesarean section. The first-time mother, a high school teacher in rural Illinois, had developed high blood pressure, a sometimes life-threatening condition in pregnancy that prompted doctors to hospitalize her. Then Crivilare’s blood pressure spiked, and the baby’s heart rate dropped. “It was terrifying,” Crivilare said. She gave birth to a healthy daughter. What followed, though, was another ordeal: thousands of dollars in medical debt …

DWP’s unchecked database leaves tens of thousands of carers at risk of debt | Carers

DWP’s unchecked database leaves tens of thousands of carers at risk of debt | Carers

Published by skeptic

Tens of thousands of unpaid carers are at risk of debt and criminal prosecution because their cases are lying unchecked on a government “alert” database of people being overpaid benefits, according to new figures. Officials are aware of the mounting number of instances where UK carers are at risk of racking up overpayments that can in some cases lead to crippling debt, but for the past five years have chosen not to investigate all cases.. Overpayments happen when someone who claims £81 a week carer’s allowance, often for looking after a frail, disabled or ill relative, breaches a strict government-imposed earning cap, which means they cannot earn more than £151 a week in a paid job. If the carer breaches that limit, even by a penny, their whole allowance is deemed to be an overpayment, which the DWP forces them to repay, and in some cases also takes them to court. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has been accused of “burying its head in the sand” after it emerged ministers put in place …

Gen-Zers Slide Deeper Into Debt As Bidenomics Failure Crushes America’s Future Leaders 

Gen-Zers Slide Deeper Into Debt As Bidenomics Failure Crushes America’s Future Leaders 

Published by skeptic

It may seem crazy, but here’s some advice for heavily indebted Gen-Zers: Put down the smartphone. Stop spending on DoorDash and Uber Eats. Perhaps cancel a few streaming services. Also, the spending party is over despite calls from the White House to cancel student debt.  The rising debt load Gen-Zers are carrying is alarming. The average credit-card balance for 22- to 24-year-olds was $2,834 in 1Q23, compared with an average inflation-adjusted balance of $2,248 in the same period in 2013, according to Wall Street Journal, citing new data from credit-reporting agency TransUnion.  The youngest generation is coming to age during a time when Bidenomics has been a complete failure, and these kids are spending themselves in financial ruin.  “This is a generation that is feeling financial stress in a more acute way than millennials did a decade ago,” said Charlie Wise, head of global research at TransUnion. On Tuesday, Billionaire investor and Duquesne Family Office Chairman & CEO Stan Druckenmiller slammed Bidenomics and warned the Federal Reserve and federal government “misdiagnosed Covid and thought it was — we were going into a depression.” Druckenmiller …

No one reveres you like we do – POLITICO

No one reveres you like we do – POLITICO

Published by skeptic

Vučić also stressed that, when it comes to cooperation with Beijing, “the sky is the limit.” Serbia stands out as an early adopter of Chinese investments in Europe, such as the construction of the Pupin Bridge in 2013. Since then, investment initiatives have surged, including extensive infrastructure projects such as highways, the Smederevo Ironworks and the Zijin Mining Basin. However, this expansion has come at a cost to Serbia, which has amassed a debt burden of around €3.7 billion, due to the common practice of Chinese investments being bundled into loan schemes. It is also the sole European nation to acquire Chinese HQ-22 “Hong Qi” or Red Flag air defense systems, which has raised eyebrows due to the difficulty of integrating them into its existing weapons systems. Xi stopped in Belgrade after two days in France with President Emmanuel Macron, and before a trip to Budapest to meet Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán — like Vučić, another thorn in the West’s side. Swapping Russia for China Xi’s arrival was met with stringent security measures which effectively …